1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an autonomously controlled greenhouse cultivation system, and in particular to a control and cultivation system that is applied to an enclosed or semi-enclosed greenhouse to use fuel cells to create, in a green-energy manner, various growth environments and conditions for greenhouse plants.
2. The Related Arts
In the traditional agricultures, plants are exposed to the natural environments and are thus affected by insect damage and surrounding pollutions so that the growth environments of the plants cannot be effectively controlled and are totally rely upon the natural weather. This is quite a challenge to the agricultural people. In addition, in the traditional agricultures, the growth environments of plants are not readily controllable so that plants are easily subjected to chilling injury or diseases caused by hotness. Further, a large amount of chemical fertilizer and pesticides of stronger toxicity must be commonly used in order to improve the growth speed and suppress the occurrences of diseases and pest damages, so that the plants so cultivated, after being eaten, may cause severer threatens to human health. Thus, greenhouse cultivating is now the new trend of green agriculture for it can overcome the issues of chemical fertilizers and pesticide pollutions of the traditional agriculture.
However, in the conventional greenhouse cultivation, photosynthesis of the plants carried out inside a clean greenhouse must be taken into serious consideration and mimicking of environmental factors, such as illumination, temperature, humidity, watering and irrigation, and natural change of weather, must be carefully exercised for plants in order to allow the plants to grow normally inside the greenhouse in the same as they will outdoors. For example, the photosynthesis of plant can be expressed in chemical formula as follows: 12H2O+6CO2→C6H12O6+6O2+6H2O. In other words, plants need proper amounts of water and carbon dioxide to be converted into organic carbohydrate (C6H12O6), oxygen, and water through the photosynthetic reactions carried out by chlorophyll of the plants and illumination. This means the plants, even being cultivated in a greenhouse, still needs a proper amount of water supply and carbon dioxide of suitable concentration in order to allow the plants to carry out photosynthetic reactions in exactly the same way as if they were growing in the nature and thus ensuring normal growth of the plants. Further, the harvest of the plants can be increased, if the illumination time, the switching sequence, the light spectrum used (such as blue light and the likes), concentration of carbon dioxide, time period of application, and temperature control are properly adjusted. Some plants may provide an increase of at least 30% of the harvest. This is not achievable by the conventional greenhouse cultivation.
Thus, conventional greenhouse cultivation needs electricity supply from for example an electrical main or solar cells that are claimed to be “green energy” to serve as a power source for generating illumination that resembles the natural environment and to create environmental factors, such as temperature, humidity, and watering and irrigation by consuming a large amount of power from such an electricity supply to generate heat or supply and spray water or mist. This consumes a great amount of electrical power and such a consumption of electrical power is generally a heavy economic burden of operation cost for greenhouse cultivation that is operated with emphasis on green energy. Further, the conventional greenhouse must supply organic fertilizer for the growth of plants and allows the microorganism of the natural environments to naturally decompose the organic substance to generate carbon dioxide or employs a direct supply of carbon dioxide from a gas canister in order to maintain the sufficient concentration of carbon dioxide for the greenhouse plant to carry out photosynthesis. Consequently, besides supply of electrical power and illumination, the conventional greenhouse cultivation facility also needs to additionally prepare and supply environmental resources required for plant growth and photosynthesis in respect of the above described factors of temperature, humidity, water supply and irrigation, and carbon dioxide. It is thus difficult to integrate and use collectively the supply of environmental resources of illumination, temperature, humidity, water supply and irrigation, and carbon dioxide and individual investment must be done separately for the facility expense and unnecessary consumption of a large amount of electrical power. This leads to a complicated structure of the conventional greenhouse based plant cultivation facility of which the installation and cultivation costs are both high. The price of the agricultural product of greenhouse cultivation is thus excessively high, making it limited to a small group of high-price consumers and impossible to be popular for general consumers. This is a serious issue to be addressed for the greenhouse cultivation.
Prior art patent documents in this field are known, such as Taiwan Utility Model No. M442023, which discloses a plant cultivation system, Taiwan Patent No. 1365711, which discloses a solar energy based greenhouse, Taiwan Utility Model No. M423999, which relates to an automatic flower caring device, Taiwan Patent Publication No. 201309190, which discloses a green-energy water-saving planting greenhouse system, and Taiwan Patent Publication No. 201038190, which discloses a greenhouse or agricultural shed containing thin-film solar cells. These documents disclose facility that uses solar cells or storage batteries to provide primary power supply for supplying of electrical power to illumination of the greenhouse and also supply electrical power for the operation of equipment that converts electrical power to provide temperature, humidity, and water supply and irrigation. However, in the process of conversion, there is still a great amount of unnecessary electrical power is lost, so that the operation efficiency of the solar cells is undesirably reduced. In case that the supply of electrical power from these sources is insufficient, an additional supply of electrical power from for example the electrical main is required. This makes it not possible for the greenhouse cultivation to achieve the economic benefit of true greenhouse based high-quality agriculture.
Similarly, in the known techniques of the prior art patent documents and the above described conventional greenhouse cultivation system, besides the illumination equipment can be directly operated with the supply of electrical power from for example electrical main or solar cells, there is generally no way to directly handle the issue of supply of environmental resources in respect of for example temperature, humidity, water supply and irrigation, and carbon dioxide. Additional equipment and resources must be separately installed and provided for the supply of temperature, humidity, water and irrigation, and carbon dioxide. This leads to the same problems and shortcomings of complicated facility, high cultivation cost, and great loss caused by conversion of electrical power as those found in the conventional greenhouse cultivation systems.